The NYT brings its usual level of accruacy to this topic. Here's the penultimate paragraph:

"Some customers are paying attention. When Carlos Rodriguez, a community manager for a Web start-up, built out the PC for his home theater, he turned to a Zalman CNPS9500, a $49 cooler for the C.P.U. that comes with hundreds of thin copper fins and weighs almost a quarter of a pound."

Wow! The 9500 weighs almost a quarter of a pound? That's over a hundred grams! An amazingly heavy piece of gear!

Yeah, it's too bad that the Sonata (2 in this case) is perceived as "a computer case engineered to be extraordinarily quiet" -- it's an okay case, but not extraordinary. That high praise should be saved for the Solo/P150 and the P180/182, IMO.

But, it certainly is great to get a mention in the NYT, and hopefully folks will seek out SPCR, because of the reference!

The "Quiet" Antec stuff...whether a Sonata or a 182...are a commercial effort to be an off the shelf improvement over an OEM case.

They still are limited in that they aim to be usable by newbies as well as experts and have to accomodate the full spectrum of gear. Just sticking to the ATX layout (more or less) is somewhat limiting.

Felger and Bluefront have done a lot of nifty concepts using the "Bigfan" approach. I'm an advocate of DIY cases,of using eSATA to get the HDDs further away,of re-arranging the stuff in the case to make a single Big Fan a viable airflow source for everything.

Such extremes can get "more silent" than any off the shelf product. With that viewpoint.....I'd grin at the idea a Sonata case is ultimate....or a 182.
The mega $ Zalman......well that thing is pretty much beyond DIY tech...and beyond any budget I'd ever hope to have.

I thought that the article would focus more on consumer grade computers that are getting quieter because of enthusiasts like us making these things more known. You know, like the apples and the Dells and the HPs. I was pleasantly surprised that it addressed us directly. Good news for SPCR. Now, how about a few more articles on here to take advantage of the new found publicity. It has been a little slow around here.

Didn't NYT just drop their online subscription thing in favour of just ad-based everything? I know I didn't have any issue seeing this article.

NYT has been a subscription thing only WRT their star op-ed folk like Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd. The rest of the paper is free with free registration. I've been registered since day 1 of that regime, and I've never had spam problems or anything else as a result.

The NYT apparently figured that "why pay these op-ed stars big money and then give away the product for free?" Now, they still don't give it away for free; they accept ad money instead. Have you noticed Google's stock is over $600 a share? Ad revenue. Nobody pays to use Google, but they - we - have to put up with the ads.

Ink-based newspaper publishing is used to selling a product, a mindset not unlike the RIAA. The per-share value of Google stock suggests they may be making a mistake. The NYT seems to be moving in Google's direction...

Your always going to have some "dumbing down" of details whenever you take something technical and completely alien to the general population, and try to write to the general populace about it. I thought he did a good job of relaying the important information. The biggest thing most readers will want to know is "where do i go to buy this", or "where do i go to find out more", both of which the article covers.

I concur with autoboy. How about some more reviews/articles to take advantage of the subsequent spike in traffic from a fairly substantial advertisment of the website. It has been a little slow lately. We didnt already review everything pertinant did we? I cant think of anything specific ive been wanting to see reviewed though now that i think about it. I just know that i love reading the reviews MikeC does here at SPCR, and i want more.

I concur with autoboy. How about some more reviews/articles to take advantage of the subsequent spike in traffic from a fairly substantial advertisment of the website. It has been a little slow lately. We didnt already review everything pertinant did we? I cant think of anything specific ive been wanting to see reviewed though now that i think about it. I just know that i love reading the reviews MikeC does here at SPCR, and i want more.

It's interesting, but while the NYT article brought lots of visitors directly from that article, overall traffic levels were unaffected. You may be surprised, but according to Google Analytics, SPCR's traffic is almost as steady as the tide, with minor variations depending on the day of the week: Peaks early in the week (Mon~Weds), bottoms out Sunday. But no question that many of these are new readers, some of whom may stick around.

I admit new editorial content has been slow to be added for the last couple months. It's been a hectic and disruptive summer, and SPCR has lost much of the staff we had a year ago, so it's time to recruit again. At the same time, it is true that SPCR has covered so much of the fundamentals of PC silencing, and so many products in each category, that anyone who studies the site with some purpose can quickly learn to sort the chaff from the wheat; ie, there aren't many products that seem compelling or essential for us to review these days.

Someone did suggest doing another CPU power survey -- limiting it to just the lower power high efficiency devices, of which there are quite a few these days. This would be a compelling read....

Your PSU reviews bring in a lot of traffic from non SPCR type readers because you are the best PSU reviewer around. Those are always helpful. Yes, I agree that there is enough information here to design a silent comptuter. But I have already read all of them I haven't been as active here lately because there are less articles for me to interact with. I still log in and help people with their questions, but this has gotten a little stale as well. It is pretty easy to build quiet computers now.

I would love to see some more SPCR designed EndPCNoise computers. Maybe some that are unique types of machines, like a SPCR mITX comptuer. That would be a great read.

I agree that there is enough information here to design a silent computer......It is pretty easy to build quiet computers now.

quiet, yes. silent, no. it's true, the quieter you make your PC, the more you find you want to eliminate every last bit of noise. to me, it's a disappointment that after all the numerous permutations that I have tried, I can still tell that my computer is on even when watching TV (this is mostly hard drive seek noise; the usual enclosures don't work because it is a slim 3.5" HDD, and all they seem to do is magnify the noise). I will be changing to 2.5" drive shortly, but after all the disappointments it is hard to be optimistic that this will be the last piece in the puzzle. (I already have fanless PSU and only one fan [Nexus] in the PC).

Sorry, i mean quiet. I have the same problems making thing totally inaudible. I can still hear my 2.5" drive docking the head in my NSK3300. For some reason, this seems to happen every 8 seconds or so and I can't turn it off. I think my Linksys wireless network card has a bug that writes to the disk every 8 seconds, and the disk docks the head after 5 seconds or so of inactivity. This goes on all night and all day. Pretty annoying but it is so quiet that it doesn't bother me too much if I try to ignore it.

I can't get a new network card because I use a special SRX system that is the only way I can get HD video streaming to my bedroom without running wires.

MikeC, et. al.: congrats on the exposure. The characterizations weren't particularly accurate but we'll take what we can get. The author must know that too much technical detail will turn off most NYT readers. If visitors to SPCR are just semi-interested in the subject, the quality of the reviews will hold them.

autoboy wrote:

Linksys wireless network card has a bug that writes to the disk every 8 seconds

huh???

Not too steal the thread, but since it's already been done, I'd like to determine the source of the constant disk access (or at least the pulsing disk activity light) in XP/Vista also. Obviously indexing will cause it with periodic updating - but this feature has been disabled - at least the option has been disabled. Also disk cache flushing will cause background activity but this should have a finite end. Like autoboy, I notice more of a heartbeat-like light activity every few seconds (but then I don't hear the disk). I've always wondered if disabling the swap file would explain it away.

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